New York hospitals have filed thousands of lawsuits against patients
New York hospitals have sued thousands of patients to collect on unpaid medical bills since 2015, calling into question why the not-for-profits have received considerable tax benefits and state funding to treat the poor.
The antipoverty not-for-profit group Community Service Society found nearly 31,000 civil cases filed by 139 hospitals in 26 New York counties from 2015 to 2019, with a small group of health systems accounting for most of the lawsuits.
Some of the most litigious hospitals are part of the area’s largest health systems, including NYU Langone Health, Northwell Health and New York–Presbyterian.
Crouse Hospital in Syracuse filed the largest number of lawsuits against its patients—5,546 during the span— nearly double that of the second-most-litigious hospital.
A Crouse spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.
Northwell hospitals filed around 10,000 lawsuits against its patients, including 2,233 from North Shore University Hospital.
A Northwell spokesman said the health system only takes legal action when a patient has been unresponsive to multiple attempts to resolve the existing balance, including offers of financial assistance, and when the patient has “a strong ability to pay.”
The Community Service Society report found a few hospitals represented an outsize number of the lawsuits. Twentyfive facilities represented 93% of all legal actions.
NYU Winthrop on Long Island filed 2,749 lawsuits from 2015 to 2019. The hospital officially joined NYU Langone in August 2019, and a spokeswoman for the health system said it is now abiding by NYU Langone’s more generous financial-aid policy and its policy of avoiding litigation against patients.
A breakdown of the lawsuits shows the hospital filed 815 in 2019, which was the most of any year in the five-year span. ●
A longer version of this story originally appeared in Crain’s New York Business.